SketchTravel in Portugal
A quick stop in London where we promptly offended our waiter
We chose a flight to Portugal that gave us an 8 hour layover in London. That way we figured we could pop into London and take leisurely strolls in Soho and Trafalgar Square. It was a solid plan, except we didn’t figure in the massive security and procedures just to get out of the airport, since London wasn’t our actual destination. Long lines, waiting, realizing we were in the wrong line. It’s all great fun, right? We did eventually get through it all and took a train into the city. But alas it was cool, gray, and then started to rain. So we ducked into a café where I promptly offended the server by ordering coffee with cream. “What”, she asked? “We don’t have that.” Don’t make that mistake. It’s coffee with MILK. No sketches in London this trip, but you can see my earlier ones in the post Sketchtravel in Europe
At last, Lisbon
We stayed a couple nights in a little 3rd floor apartment on the cable car route on A. Cavaleiros. There were many Chinese noodle restaurants in the neighborhood. About 3 feet from our entrance we had a pastry shop run by a guy who spoke pretty much every language. And a couple more steps was an entrance to a courtyard where we found a great place serving authentic Portugese food under orange trees. Fish and Sangria. Before getting our rental car to head for the mountains, we spent a day walking around the hilly neighborhoods down to the water, getting lost in the twisting sidewalks, and taking in the Museum of Fado.
On the road
I loved finding these old standing rocks in places around Portugal. Just google megalithic stones Portugal and you will see. Our destination was Monsaraz Castle. Once we checked into our room, we went out looking for the castle walls and found there were none. So we drove out into the country and saw a castle off in the distance. That was our destination but since everything is named something Monsaraz, we found that our room was in the wrong town. But no worries, it was easy enough to explore the castle anyway. Portugal has many castles, and they’re awesome to see. Most of them have communities built inside the castle walls, with lodging, bakeries, restaurants, sometimes art galleries and more. You can actually drive up into the castle and around the narrow streets, which is really cool until you run into tour groups, with their elderly, hapless herds roaming around blocking everything in sight, staring up at things and oblivious to you, the frustrated driver! I wonder if there is a time of year when tours are forbidden?
Hobbit houses and grape vines
The smaller mountain backroads along the Spanish border were interesting and fun. It helped to have a wifi router and ipad, since we made somewhere between one and two million turns at the seemingly infinite number of turnarounds we encountered. Eventually we arrived at the mountain village of Monsanto. This was the most interesting place ever, with houses literally built in the middle of a steep field of giant boulders. We parked as close as we could and hiked up to our cottage, which had a huge boulder coming into the living room and bathroom. Later we hiked up to a little restaurant in the rock for dinner, and up to explore a castle on the mountain top. Every single thing here was made of rock, except for maybe the toilet paper.
Next stop was the port wine country at Barcos, up above the Douro River. It was great exploring all the little hamlets tucked around the hills and mountains, and wandering around on foot through the ancient alleyways of this town of Barcos, built in the 1100s. We got stuck while driving a couple times on these ridiculously narrow one lane roads, once behind a tractor just sitting there blocking the way. As we were packing to leave, our neighbor came over and insisted on pouring us shots from her own keg of port. It is always good manners to accept gifts from the friendly village neighbors, though port for breakfast is not my recommendation for driving the mountain road back down to the Douro River.
Putting the evil in medieval
We took a river ride on the Douro River after leaving Barcos. Great to see some of the wineries from that perspective. I stopped in a little store to get water for the drive to Porto, and as luck would have it, I’d wandered into a family deli. I left with four kinds of amazing smoked meat, three cheeses, red wine, bread, a cold bottle of their homemade muscatel wine, and water of course.
Porto was hot but really fun to explore. You have to love steps to visit this country. Porto was just like being on the elliptical machine but with better views. I loved the Serralves Museum, and the Rem Koolhaus Museum of Music, which I did a sketch of from the park across the street. I loved how the views of it changed with each step I took as I circled it. It is such a contrast in a city of truly awesome classic architecture.
On the way from Porto back to Lisbon we stopped at the university town of Coimbra, and at some great churches including the Knights Templar in Tomar. Remember the Knights Templar, those warrior-saints? They brought us the crusades. Just think of the Da Vinci Code. It was pleasantly creepy. I’d say demonic but I don’t really know for sure. If evil has an architectural style, this may well be it.
Then back to a few last days in Lisbon. The city was crazy busy due to a big music festival and a few other events. So we avoided the larger museums and their long lines, taking in less traveled museums and areas that were well worth the visit. This was such an interesting trip, and I came away with some 20 sketches too. You can’t ask for more.
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